Westward Weird

by Martin H. Greenberg

  His eyes twitched, then looked at me for a minute like I had just showed up. “Liberty? Yeah, I...” He tried to sit up, and just as quickly fell back down.

  I took off my bandanna and gave it to him to wipe the blood. “You stay put,” I said, and stood to face the man on the wagon, my governor buzzing in my head like an angry hornet.

  I stood and stepped up next to the carriage. The rifleman stepped away, startled by the suddenness of my movement. The other men with the guns watched closely, but did nothing. They figured they had no reason to fear me or what I’d do to their boss.

  He looked down at me, his eyes narrowed against the glare of the sun shining off my polished head. “What do you want, tin man?”

  “Seems to me,” I said, “you’re stirring yourself up a big pot of trouble here. There’s five of you, and a whole town of us.”

  He laughed. “‘Cept for you and your boy here, I don’t see nobody stepping up. And besides, you and most of this town is nothing but tin-men. That whirl-a-gig in your heads won’t let you hurt me and my boys, and ain’t a one of you my machine, Mogul, couldn’t rip in half.” He laughed again. “You ain’t worth the trouble of a real man to fill you full of holes like an old can!”

  And he was mostly right about that. Every clockwork man was built with a governor attached to his Greek gears so that he couldn’t harm a flesh-and-bone man, no matter how much he tried or how bad he wanted to. • -

  But it was just then, having seen him closer, that I remembered where I had seen him before: at the county auction where I had bought my spread. He had run the price up on me considerable, and had come near to beating me out. He had been a sore loser about it, too.

  Later I heard tell I had been lucky in that he had lost a good deal of his cash money earlier in the day in a card game, and had been caught up short.

  I wondered if Hudd recognized me. I’m right conspicuous, with my cracked face and my right arm all patched together on the battlefield with spare parts from other clockwork men. But it didn’t seem that he did, clockwork men seeming to be mostly beneath his notice.

  That meant I knew more about him than he did about me.

  That set my gears to spinning, and gave me an idea.

  “If it’s gonna be me against your steam-man, then let’s make it count for something. Are you a betting man, Hudd?”

  He chuckled. “You want to wager on a fight between you and Mogul? Now that’s a bet I’d be a fool not to take! What do you mean to bet?”

  “It’s me against him, one on one. I take him down, you tear down your dam and share the river like always.”

  “That’s a big wager, tin man.”

  “You said yourself, how can you pass on odds like these?”

  “And if my Mogul wins?”

  “You get your water money.”

  “Seems to me like I get that already!”

  “That remains to be seen. And anyhow, I’ll sweeten the pot, and throw in the deed to my ranch, the Walking C, and everything on it. Livestock too. Seeing as how you lost that one already, you might want a chance to win it back.”

  His grin turned to a suspicious frown. It’s hard for clockwork man to read a flesh-man’s expressions, but I had learned much during and after my time in the War, and I believe I have come into a deeper understanding of many of the emotions they convey. He remembered me now, but still he studied me, looking for something else.

  “I seen your like in my days with the Confederacy. You’re an artilleryman, ain’t ya? Got them special gears for aiming? Them gears that don’t miss.”

  Which was true. A clockwork man’s governor won’t let him fire a cannon, but he can tote shells, load and aim just fine, long as a flesh-and-blood man pulls the firing cord. It wasn’t what I was, but it was what I was built for.

  He continued, “I reckon those might work with a pistol as well as a field-gun. That your plan? Hope to stand back and take out my steam-man’s vitals ‘fore he ever gets near you?”

  “You’re too smart for me, Boss. I was thinking that way, but you got me now. We’ll do this bare-handed.”

  His suspicion was gone. He threw back his head and laughed. “You still want this? I swear, that crack in your head has done scrambled your gears and made you loco! But I ain’t one to turn down free entertainment. When and where?”

  “Here and now is as good as any.”

  He laughed again. “Make it tomorrow, noon, at that quarry south of town. I’m gonna give all my hands the day off so’s they can come watch Mogul pull your arms and legs off!”

  ~ * ~

  “Liberty has a plan!” said Rusty, faithfully.

  “And I tell you, I don’t,” I said, looking down at my cobbled-together right arm as Ben tinkered with it.

  The arm had never worked entirely right since it had been put back together just before Gettysburg, but Ben swore he knew enough to fix it now. “It just came to my mind, and I just up and said it. Figured if he was gonna kill off the town, I had nothing to lose. At least this way, we have a chance.”

  “Even the town ain’t worth getting torn apart over,” said Ben.

  “For you maybe, Ben. Lots of places a freedman can go. But for us clockwork men, ain’t never been a town like Calliope Springs, and there might never be its likes again.”

  I had seen so many things in the War. I had never understood why men volunteered to give up their lives for a place, for an idea. Just then, I thought I finally understood.

  “Hold the lantern closer, Rusty. I need to see up inside here.” Ben took the magnifying lens out of his good eye, the other one nearly swollen shut and partially covered by the bandages that wrapped his head, and looked up at me. “Why did you go and do it, Liberty? Why did you call them out like that?”

  I looked back at him. “Why did you? I was only walking in your footsteps, friend.”

  He thought for a moment. “Somebody had to. Nobody else was stepping up, and I didn’t see how no clockwork man could do it at all. I guess I was wrong on that.”

  “Maybe,” I said, still wondering why I had done what I’d done, even though my gears gave me no doubt that I was doing the right thing. “In the retreat, after Gettysburg, we had lost our cannon and our horses, nothing but four run-down clockwork men and our commanding officer who was near to insane with anger at our losses. And on a road we passed some infantrymen with four Negroes as their prisoners, a man and a woman and their two children.

  “The soldiers said they were escaped slaves and they were taking them back to our lines. They complained that the children were slowing them down, and my commander got a wild look in his eye that I didn’t understand at the time. He just had all that anger left over from the battle and from the losing of it. All that anger just buzzing around, looking for a place to light.

  “He struck them down with the butt of his rifle, like Hudd did to you, right with their ma and pa watching. But then he put his bayonet into them to finish them off, and kicked them, still twitching, into the ditch.”

  Everybody was quiet for a while. “No offense to you, Ben ... Your courage goes without saying. But I don’t take to see the strong prey on the weak.”

  He sighed and went back to the arm. “No offense taken, Liberty.”

  There wasn’t much to say after that.

  ~ * ~

  When it came time to ride out, I found that Ben and Rusty had spent the morning polishing up my old war-horse so his steel hide and his brass and copper fittings gleamed in the sun. I would have liked to set him running, to tear on out to meet my destiny, but instead we walked slowly, leading a parade consisting of most of the population of Calliope Springs.

  The limestone quarry was cut into a hillside about a mile out of town. It had been abandoned early on, and was little more than a smooth notch into the hillside, still cluttered with abandoned pieces of mottled gray stone.

  Despite what I’d told Rusty, truth be told, I had a bit of a plan. Or at least, a hope.

  I was faster than the stea
m-man, and without being modest, smarter. Ben was no steam-smith, but he had done some reading on steam-men, and put me on to some of their weak spots: coils, tubes, valves and such where I might do him harm with something short of a cannon-shot.

  But to make it work, I’d have to get close, and that would be near to suicide.

  Hudd and about twenty of his men were already waiting there on horseback, spread out in a loose half-circle with the quarry walls to their back. I couldn’t help but notice that they were all packing, and most carried rifles. They didn’t look like they were out just for a day of friendly sport.

  Mogul stood near the center of the quarry next to that big plowhorse of his. He was busy stoking his firebox ‘til his chest looked nearly red hot, clouds of black smoke coming off his stack, steam and scalding water escaping from every valve and joint.

  I stopped about ten yards away and climbed down off Piston.

  Mogul turned towards me, and removed a huge holster from where it hung from a bolt on his hip. In it was basically a small field gun with a steel stock attached. He hung it on his saddle, and turned to face me. I had never heard him speak, and his voice was like a chord of the low notes on a pipe organ. “Let’s do this,” he said.

  “Last tin-man standing and in one piece!” shouted Hudd from behind him. “Fight!”

  The clockwork folk mostly looked on silently, while some of the flesh-townsfolk shouted and cheered encouragement. Only Hudd’s men seemed truly excited by the event, whooping and whistling and eager to watch hot-oil spurt.

  Mogul moved towards me like somebody had flipped a lever, and I waited till he was almost at me to dash to one side and run behind him. There was a grate on his back with a coil underneath that. Ben called it a condenser, and said it could be holed with a sharp blow or a good poke. I tried to go for it, but Mogul was already spinning around.

  I just managed to duck under his arm. As I did, I tried to strike at an exposed valve there, but I was too far to reach and had to back away.

  Hudd’s men booed and jeered.

  “You can take him, Liberty!” I heard Ben shout.

  I rushed him again, going for some exposed tubing under his firebox, but his massive head of steam made him faster than I expected.

  An arm like a derrick slammed across my chest, denting in my chest-plate and sending me flying.

  I landed ten feet away, my body ringing against the hard stone like the bell I was named for. Another blow like that, and it would be as cracked as my head.

  I tried to get up, and found the problem with our makeshift coliseum. The stone gave my metal hands and feet little purchase, and I was having trouble getting up.

  Mogul pivoted and began moving towards me like a train leaving the station, slowly building up speed.

  I tried to get up again, and fell back.

  Mogul could have run right over me, but he stopped just short, and turned to look at a slab of limestone there that must have weighed half a ton.

  He picked it up like it was nothing, raised it over his head, and stood over me, blotting out the sun.

  His arms started to swing down with his mighty load.

  My left foot caught in a crack in the rock, and I was able to get enough leverage to stagger up into a wobbly run. I just got out of the way before the slab hit the ground and split right down the middle.

  I realized something was in my left hand.

  I had come up with a hand-full of small rocks, little more than pebbles. We had said bare-handed, but if Mogul could throw rocks, then I reckoned it opened the way for me to do the same.

  I am not strong, not in the way that Mogul was strong, but springs are fast, and I have an artilleryman’s gears in my head. On a good day, I can throw a small rock like a musket-ball, and I never miss.

  Mogul turned towards me, and I let off a throw that cracked against the tubing I’d aimed for earlier, letting out a little jet of steam.

  Mogul didn’t seem to notice, so I put the next one right into his left eye, shattering the lens full of spider-cracks.

  Ben had done a right fine job of fixing my arm.

  He whistled in anger, a sound that was part train, part devil. But I was already taking off at a right angle again, forcing him to turn.

  He was slow at turning. I couldn’t give him a chance to get going in a straight line, where he could built up speed.

  Snap!

  Another rock hit that valve under his arm.

  Mogul turned to protect himself, and I put another two more straight through the grate on his back. Steam and water started to spew out.

  Hudd’s men’s cheers and calls fell silent, unable to believe what they were seeing.

  Mogul backed away, and I scooped up a rock the size of my hand off the ground.

  Snap!

  His other eye shattered completely, smoke curling up from the empty socket.

  The big steam-man staggered blindly, turning in circles for a while until the valve I’d jammed with my rock built up too much pressure. Something in him just burst, and with a screaming whistle, he vanished in a cloud of his own steam.

  He was gone for a moment before the steam lifted just enough for me to see him falling to the quarry floor, a sputtering wreck.

  It was a while before Hudd found his voice. “You cheated, you tin-traitor!”

  “Not near as much as Mogul did,“ I said. “And I’ll just bet you were the one what told him to do it!”

  Hudd looked at what was left of Mogul and laughed bitterly. “Damned thing was more trouble than he was worth anyways! Anyhow, don’t matter none,” he raised his voice to a shout. “I never intended to give you any water anyway. I figured I’ll just wait ‘til enough of you are wound down, and then my boys will ride in and burn the whole place! By next spring, I’ll be grazing my cows over your ashes!”

  Inside my head, my governor whined and growled until I could feel it heating up from the friction.

  Hudd pointed at me. “Take him down, boys!”

  Suddenly all his men were going for their iron, but I was already moving.

  The bullets flew around me, and one grazed off my shoulder, but I was moving towards Hudd fast and they had to hold their fire. He pulled his Colt Paterson and got off a wild shot that came nowhere near me.

  Before he could get off another one, my hands were on him. In one move I had yanked him out of his saddle, had my left arm around his neck, and his pistol in my hand.

  I pushed the nose of the Colt hard against his right temple. He flinched as I cocked the hammer.

  “Tell your men to drop their arms and ride out!”

  Hudd coughed and managed a laugh. “You won’t hurt me, tin man! You can’t!”

  I tightened my grip on his neck, moved the barrel of the gun just a little and squeezed the trigger.

  Half of Hudd’s ear vanished in a spray of red.

  He started to scream.

  I recocked the gun and put it back to his temple. “You said this crack in my head made me loco, and you was right, Hudd! Cocked up my governor but good. I’ve already killed one man that deserved it, a heartless southern bastard not much different than you! Second time should be easier ...”

  He moaned in terror. “Drop your guns!” he screamed. “Get out of here! He means to kill me!”

  They were slow about it, unable to believe that an automaton could hurt a flesh-man. But one by one the cowboys lay down their guns, turned, and rode away.

  The townsfolk just looked on in quiet horror at me, my face splattered with blood, and my terrified prisoner.

  Hudd looked up at me, his eyes wild. “You won’t get away with it, you tin monster! You can’t stay here now that your secret is out. They’ll hunt you down! Every right-thinking man in Texas will ride out and hunt you down! I can wait! Even if you kill me, I got a son, and he and my boys will be back when you’re gone, to finish off this town!”

  “You’re right, I can’t stay. But you’ll leave this town be, and you’ll tear that dam of yours down, and I
’ll tell you why.

  “If I hear of any harm coming to Calliope Springs or its people, if I hear you mess with the water supply in any way, I’ll be back for you, and you’ll never see me coming.

  “You do it, and you’ll spend the rest of your short, sorry life looking at every tree, every rock, every hill, every building, wondering if you’re going to die. ‘Cause I got a Kentucky long rifle that will take the wings off a fly at 500 yards—and I never miss!” I kicked him loose, so he landed in a heap at my feet.